Forward to Socialist Revolution

STATEMENT ON
NATIONAL SITUATION

NEW PHASE OF INDIAN PEOPLES'
STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM

15TH OF AUGUST CONFIRMS MUZAFFARPUR
RESOLUTION OF R.S.P.

The third All National Conference of the Revolutionary
Socialist Party meets at a time when one historical phase of Indian
people's struggle for social, economic and democratic freedom
has ended, and a new phase has begun with the so-called transfer
of power on the historic 15th of August 1947. The Muzaffarpur
Convention of the Party, held just on the eve of the announcement
of the Mountbatten Plan under which transfer of power was
effected, already forecast in its main political resolution the nature
and significance of the impending political changes. These changes
were already taking shape through compromise-negotiations
between crisis-ridden British imperialism and the native Indian
bourgeoisie represented by the leadership of the Indian National
Congress and the Muslim League. The bifurcated state-division
of the country on a communal basis into the Dominions of the
Indian Union and Pakistan under the British Crown, the recession
of the British imperialism from the position of direct ruling
authority into the background and the handing over of political
power to the representatives of the Congress and League, the
concession of the status of formal political independence to India
and Pakistan, initially as members of British Commonwealth under
the terms of the Statute of Westminister—all these facts have
brilliantly confirmed the correctness of the forecast made at
Muzaffarpur.

CONSTITUTIONAL DEAL BETWEEN IMPERIALISM AND
THE INDIAN BOURGEOISIE

The phase of national democratic or bourgeois-democratic
revolution against foreign imperialism thus ended, owing to the
vacillation and inherent compromisist tendency of national
leadership and the immaturity and organisational unpreparedness
of the proletariat and the peasantry, in a sort of half-baked and
truncated revolution in the shape of a constitutional deal between
imperialism and the reformist bourgeoisie over the heads of the
masses. As the experience of last one year has amply proved, the
grant of so-called political independence, and the installation
of"national" governments in the Indian Union and the Pakistan,
has not ushered in the era of real freedom for the masses of
common people. It has only brought the Indian capitalist class
and other allied vested interests to power and has opened the
way to a partial bourgeois-capitalist development of the country,
under the over-all hegemony of Anglo-American finance, as far as
that is possible in this period of general crisis and decline of
capitalism. The masses of common people, the workers, peasants
and poorer sections of the middle classes, have been deliberately
excluded by cleverly designed constitutional and extra-constitutional devices from any share in political power, or any real voice
in moulding the destiny of the country. None of the basic tasks of
the national-democratic revolution have been or could possibly be,
resolved on this basis—in fact none of the major democratic
demands of the Indian masses have been fulfilled so far.

PERSPECTIVE OF SOCIALISM OPEND UP: NO OTHER
WAY TO COMPLETE DEMOCRACY EXCEPT THROUGH
SOCIALISM

The Muzaffarpur Resolution therefore directed the attention
of the Party ad the Indian working class to the new historical and
revolutionary perspectives that confront them in the changed
national-political situation. It laid down in the clearest possible
terms that hence forward in the context ofthe new situation which
had arisen, Socialist Revolution forms the strategic objective of
the Party and the proletarian masses. The unaccomplished
tasks of bourgeois democratic revolution and the basic democratic demands ofthemasses would find their historic fulfilment
in course of the development of the struggle for Socialism.

It further indicated that the task of organising Socialist
revolution would have to be undertaken from the point where the
tasks of democracy have been left unaccomplished i.e., with
demand for the fulfilment of the basic democratic, economic and
class demands of the proletariat and the peasantry, which would
form the minimum programme of the party at the initial stages of
the new historic phase. The new phase was, in terms of the
Muzaffarpur Resolution, the phase of the struggle for Socialism,
the phase of realising the fundamental democratic rights of the
masses through Socialism. There was henceforward no other
way to complete democracy except through Socialism and a
Socialist revolution.

ESTABLISHMENT OF SOCIALIST REPUBLIC: THE NEW
GOAL OF THE PARTY: R. S. P. QUITS CONGRESS

The plenary session of the Central Committee of the party
which met at Gopalgunje, Bihar, in the last week of September
1947, just after the process of transfer of power was completed
by the installation of the Dominion governments in India and
Pakistan, reiterated in concrete terms the main political line of
the party as laid down in Muzaffarpur. The Gopalgunje resolution
defined Socialist revolution finally culminating in a Socialist
seizure of power and the establishment of a socialist republic and
dictatorship of the proletariat, as the immediate historical and
strategic objective of the party, instead of national democratic
revolution and a democratic seizure of power as formerly.

This clear-cut definition was called for to guard against the
fashionable deviations from Marxism in the shape of "New-
Democracy" and "Democratic Socialism"—which denies the
inexorable historic necessity of a revolutionary transformation of
society or the inevitability of proletarian dictatorship as a necessary
stage in the way of transition to Socialism and advocates various
sorts of reformist transitional half-way houses in the name of
socialism and democracy contrary to the basic teachings of the
Revolutionary Socialism of Marx, Engles and Lenin. The
immediate political tasks confronting the party in its day-to-
day activities both in the Indian Union and Pakistan were
derived logically from the Muzaffarpur line, as being one of
making the masses class-conscious, of exposing the character
of the bourgeois "national" governments that were set up and
organising the masses on the basis of a minimum programme
embodying their fundamental democratic demands.

The Gopalgunje Resolution further directed the Party
members working inside the Indian National Congress for coming
out of that organisation, as it was no longer possible to work with
a fighting mass programme inside the organisational frame-work
of a party dominated by the ruling bourgeoisie. Both Congress
and Muslim League as the ruling parties were bound to come into
daily conflict with the masses and their interests. The R.S.P. as
the party of the working class, as the party fighting resolutely for
the democratic rights of the masses and for socialism could no
longer allow its members working in any mass front to submit to
the limitations imposed by the Congress or its organisational
discipline. R.S.P.-ers had therefore no other alternative but to come
out of the Congress.

R.S.P. DECISIONS CONFIRMED BY LAST YEAR'S
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS

The political developments in the country during the course
of last one year and more specifically in the months following the
finalisation of the transfer of power and installation of "national"
governments, have richly confirmed and proved to the hilt the
Muzaffarpur and Gopalgunje stands of the party.

The R.S.P. was practically alone in denouncing the
Mountbatten plan of "National Independence" as a sham, and
FORWARD TO SOCIALIST REVOLUTION
in characterising the "national" governments that were being
set up as the government of capitalists and vested interests.

The R.S.P. was the first in calling attention to the hoax
that was being perpetrated in the name of democracy and
popular administration.

R.S.P. was also the first among the left parties of the
country in deducing correctly the change over of the historical
perspective of mass struggle to Socialism, as a result of the
inevitable change of class correlationship of forces following
the transfer of power and in upholding Socialist revolution as
the immediate strategic objective before the Indian working
class and toiling masses.

R.S.P. was the first to emphasize, to all genuine leftists
and democratic forces, the necessity of coming out of the
Congress and organising the masses on independent
democratic and socialist platforms outside the Congress.

The Muzaffarpur and Gopalgunje decisions of the R.S.P.
were condemned by many so-called 'leftists' as ultra-left decisions
which ignored to take into account the alleged "possibilities of
democratic development" opened up before the masses by the
transfer of power and formation of national government by trusted
leaders of the people. Some of these "leftist" leaders including
Socialists even entered into confabulations with the Congress
Working Committee and Cabinet leaders in the hope of securing
seats in the government while the Communists who were disturbed
in their conscience by the presence of such pronounced bourgeois
right-wingers as Sardar Patel in the Cabinet, sought to rationalise
their position by the discovery of "progressive democratic" trends
in the government in men like Pandit Nehru and pledged all support
to the "national" government and its production plans on behalf
of the working class and the popular masses.

DISILLUSIONMENT (?) OF 'LEFTISTS'

Before the year was out however the pressure of objective
circumstances, and the actual performance of the popular
"national" government disillusioned many of these "leftists" and
disabused their minds of the fond hopes with which they greeted
the dawn of national independence. The Socialist "leftists" were
sorely disappointed in no time with regard to their ministerial
aspirations and they broke with the Congress in a huff-
characterising the latter as a capitalist organisation and began to
seek their fortune as the party of parliamentary opposition. The
Communists were no more successful in their attempts to woo the
Congress and the national government in the name of "peoples
democracy" and suddenly woke up to find out that the Indian
bourgeoisie now installed in power in the national government
and the leaders of the Indian National Congress have deserted the
"camp" of the people and have entered into collaboration with
Anglo-American imperialism. They would no longer, therefore,
make any distinction between Nehru and Patel, which was frankly
admitted as a mistake—and wanted to carry forward mass struggle
for "democracy and freedom" against Nehru Government. These
erst-while friends of Nehru are now experimenting with ill-
conceived adventurist tactics under a seeming left-turn in order to
make their weight felt.

However may the present political line of these so-called
leftists stand, the enforced shift of these groups from their former
position at least proves indirectly the perspicacity and wisdom of
the Muzaffarpur and Gopalagunje resolutions of the R.S.P. It
certainly affords solid ground for being strengthened in the
conviction of the scientific correctness of the revolutionary
Marxist-Leninst line of approach of the party to political events.
It was certainly the revolutionary socialist Marxist analysis of the
R.S.P. which enabled the party to foresee the trend of coming
events correctly and in defining the perspectives of the new
revolutionary tasks set before the Party by those events.

What is more important for the Party today is however to
pass in review the experience of the national political situation as
it has developed in the past year and to draw proper lessons from
them.

DIVISION OF THE COUNTRY BRINGS NEW
TASKS TO THE FORE:

Fight resolutely against inter-state communal
war-mongering for the class solidarity of
toiling masses in both the states.

The country now stands divided into two separate state-
entities viz: the Indian Union and Pakistan. The common point
between them consists in that a bourgeois government is in power
and is trying to side-track the live issues of the masses by
encouraging communal reaction directly or indirectly and by
fomenting hatred and bitterness between the peoples in each of
the two states. They go even to the length of encouraging the
threat of war between the two states. All Revolutionary Socialists
must stand up resolutely against these communal zingoistic
frenzies and strive for inter-state class-solidarity of the workers
and peasants.

RECORD OF THE 'NATIONAL' GOVERNMENT : THE
HOAX OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION

The record of the Congress national government in the
Centre and the Provinces has made it amply clear that their policy
is guided by the capitalists and other anti-democratic vested-
interests. On every important national question they have bowed
down to the dictates of these vested-interests at the cost of the
masses and have shamelessly trampled down the basic democratic
rights of the masses in the interest of the capitalists and their allies.

The constitution framed in the Constituent Assembly under
the leadership of the self-same set of persons who are at the helm
of the Congress and the national government is being forged as an
authoritarian instrument of bourgeois dictatorship under the veil
of democracy. The published draft of the constitution does not
offer to the working-class and the masses of Indian people anything
except the periodical right to vote for members of Provincial
Assemblies. All sorts of power have been sought to be concentrated
in the hands of the Provincial Governors and other executive heads

All
powers togovernors

Provision of
second Chambers

Fundamental
Rights of masses
ignored totally

Constitutional
Provision for
Detention withouttrial

Princely order
given voice over
Union
Government

Kashmir and
Hyderabad

Hesitation about
Secession from
British Empire

in slavish imitation of the British "Government
of India Act" of 1935. It makes the reactionary
provision of second chambers in the provinces
and has retained the system of nomination of members to the
second chamber by the Governor. In the enumeration of
fundamental Rights in the constitution, the right
of the people to work and living wages, equal pay
for equal work, the right to old age, sickness and
unemployment insurance have no place. While these rights of the
toiling people have not been guaranteed, the property and
privileges of the vested-interests and capitalists
have been given special protection in the shape
of the clause in the Fundamental Rights and in
that no private property shall ever be taken over
for national use by the state without payment of proper compensations. In the matter of civil liberties of the people the constitution
grossly militates against all conceptions of democracy by having
provided for arrest without warrant and detention
without trial—a provision which has no
precedence in democratic constitution in any
country of the world. The manner, moreover, in
which the native states and princely order are
being incorporated through accession schemes and schemes of
"merger and union" clearly leaves a large residue of power and
economic and sumptuary privileges in the hands of feudal princes
and allows them considerable voice in influencing
the administrative and legislative organs of the
Central Government. All militant struggles
against the feudal princes have been side-tracked
by parading these so-called "accession", "merger"
and "union" schemes and y the setting up of so-called responsible
governments in the states. Mass action have been sanctioned only
in those cases where the princes refused absolutely to strike any
compromise with the bourgeoisie or on communal grounds
(Junagarh and Hyderabad being cases in example). But at the sign
of the slightest turn of popular mass actions on
revolutionary lines all struggles were suspended
and other avenues of compromise sought out. The
Congress and the national government have already made the
popular struggle against feudal autocracy in Kashmir and
Hyderabad degenerate into inter-state communal struggles between
Indian Union and Pakistan and they have in the case of Kashmir
been forced to place itself at the mercy of Anglo-American
imperialist mediation through the UNO. In the case of both of
these states the real decisive factors that could force the issue
democratically—the masses of people and their interests, but they
have either been kept at a bay without any real voice in the shaping
of their future or have been led to, communal alley-ways which
only strengthens the reactionaries. Whereas in the framing of the
constitution or in the matter of settlement with the States the entire
democratic future of the country has been bartered away in the
interests of bourgeois feudal compromise over the
head of the masses. There is yet no certainty also
if the framers of the constitution would agree to
final secession from the British Empire. Already
voices are being heard harping on the supposed advantages of
remaining a member of the British Commonwealth of Nations, as
a Dominion under British Crown—the status in which both Indian
Union and Pakistan still are. While the spokesmen of the Pakistan
Government have been frankly negotiating a bargain in this matter,
the leaders of Indian Union have so long maintained discreet
silence and the vacillating trend of thought in both the Dominions
on this matter is quite apparent.

CORRUPTION AND INEFFICIENCY OF ADMINISTRATION

Leaving aside the question of future constitution, the actual
performance of the national government in the administration of
the country during the last one year—in the framing of its budgets,
in foreign policy and in its industrial, agrarian and general
economic policies—also prove beyond doubt that it is nothing
but a government of the Indian upper classes determined to rule
over the exploited masses of Indian working class and peasantry
in the interests of the former. What is still more glaring is the
blatant fact of utter corruption and inefficiency of the
administration even from a bourgeois-capitalist angle. As a result
of negotiated compromise with British imperialism the national
government has inherited the outworn bureaucratic machinery of
administration, that had grown up in the British days, as an
instrument of oppression and foreign colonial exploitation over
the masses of the people.

The first condition for the fulfillment of the minimum
democratic demands of the masses in this country is that, this
machinery of bureaucratic rule must be smashed and that its
place taken by administration which has living and dynamic
touch with the day-to-day life of the masses, and responsive
to their interests.

The Congress and the national government were precluded
from that course by the very terms of their deal with imperialism.
The only purpose which this machinery serves, has been to keep
the government and its leaders totally insulated from the demands
of the people and their needs. The innumerable cracks and pores
of this dilapidated structure have further served to ooze corruption
from top to bottom. Government posts are looked upon as nothing
but assignments on public revenue on which thrives bribery,
nepotism and favouritism of the worst sort. The installation of
Congress governments has not changed this state of affairs in any
way except for the worse. The common people have scant chance
of obtaining any redress of their grievances even on the basis of
the meagre rights that the legal system provides them at present
and officialdom can easily take shelter behind the plea of their
being agents of a national administration conducted by trusted
national leaders of the people themselves.

On the top of this corrupt administration runs the openly
pro-capitalist policy of the national government. The first two
budgets of Indian Union government have not provided for present
deficits in the shape of nation-building schemes for the benefit of
the common people, or by way of capital lay-outs for raising the
productive efficiency and economic potential of the country.
Inflation and the sky-rocketing rise of prices have not been checked
in the slightest degree and have already out-reached the war-time
peak. Unproductive expenditure in the shape of costs of military
operations in Kashmir has gone on increasing. No proper relief
has yet been secured to lower grades of government employees
according to the recommendations of the Pay Commission. The
only relief provided is for capitalist owners of industry by way of
reduced rates of taxes on business incomes and profits.

POLICY OF NATIONALISATION PUT TO COLD STORAGE

The recently announced industrial policy of the Government
has also put all schemes of nationalisation to cold-storage, and
has sought to reassure the Indian capitalists and Anglo-American
financiers that they would have ample scope for investing their
capital here in private profit-making enterprises in almost all
branches of industry excepting a few designated ones, where the
risks are too great for private enterprise to venture in.

COLLABORATION OF THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT
WITH ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIALISM

While thus refusing to develop the industries of the country
by planned nationalisation in the interests of common man, the
government is definitely encouraging collaboration of the Indian
Capitalists with the Anglo-American bloc of financiers. By
allowing the settlement of the war-time debt of Sterling Balances
owed by Britain to India—the money which represents the blood,
sweat and tears of the starving millions in this country, to be
decided through negotiations, and agreeing to secure foreign
exchanges for current needs of business through excess of exports,
the Indian Union government has in fact sought to help Anglo-
American capitalists at the expense of the Indian people. Instead
of making any demands on the Sterling Balances, the excess of
foreign exchanges earned through favourable balance of trade is
mainly reserved for the purchase of machinery and capital goods
from America and Britain. This economic collaboration and
dependence naturally involve a corresponding attitude of political
collaboration with the Anglo-American bloc in large matters of
world-policy and inevitably decide the real alignment of Indian-
Union with Anglo-American imperialism.

WORKING CLASS THROTTLED IN THE INTEREST OF
CAPITALISTS: THE SO-CALLED INDUSTRIAL TRUCE:
ENCOURAGEMENT TO BLACK MARKETEERING

In internal industrial production, the government have made
themselves hoarse calling for a large volume of production and
demanding greater productive efforts from the working class. They
have also sought to enforce industrial truce between capital and
labour, and have, with this purpose, tried to bypass militant working
class organisations and patronise Congress-sponsored Labour
Unions under the banner of lndian National Trade Union Congress.
But they have utterly failed to give any tangible effect to the policy
of increased production by providing labour with proper incentive
and by securing them at least the minimum tolerable standards of
living and working conditions. The blame for every instance of
reduced out-put in production is always laid at the door of labour.
But no serious attempt has hitherto been made to control the vicious
spiral of rising prices and costs except by enforcing a reduction
of the share of production that goes to labour. Whatever is
conceded to labour in the shape of increased wages is taken away
through inflation, rising costs of living and indirect taxation.

On the other hand every encouragement is given to the
capitalists by inefficient control measures to keep production
deliberately at low level for trading in scarcity.Black-marketeering
has therefore become rampant in every sphere and it can be
definitely proved on the basis of the records and facts at the
disposal of the Government themselves that it is the capitalist
industrialists who have been the biggest factors in encouraging
black-marketing and bringing down the level of production through
their own greed, corruption and inefficiency.

LAND LORDS APPEASED IN THE NAME OF ABOLITION
OF LANDLORDISM : PRIVATE LANDLORDISM
REPLACED BY STATE-LANDLORDISM:
COMPENSATION TO LANDLORDS

In agrarian policy the national government has always
prevented Provincial legislatures from taking any determined move
for the abolition of landlordism in response to long-standing
demands of the masses. The pattern of land-legislation sanctioned
by higher Congress leadership and represented by the Bill for the
so-called abolition of landlordism in Bihar, simply replaces private
landlordism by state-landlordism while saddling the peasantry with
the burden of compensation. It does not secure land to the tillers
of the soil and enable the landlords to retain a considerable part
of his holdings in altered forms, direct from the state. In the form
the measure is being enacted, it really deprives them of all benefits
of the abolition of landlordism.

CIVIL LIBERTIES CRUSHED: REPRESSION AGAINST R.S.P.

The passing of the Public Safety Acts in all provinces giving
the executive the power to arrest persons, whom they suspect,
without warrant, and to detain them without trial in imitation of
the worst days of British Ordinance Rule; and the orgy of
repression let loose since then in all provinces against the members
of the Revolutionary Socialist Party and other leftist organisations
and against militant Trade Union and Kisan workers, prove beyond
doubt that the Government is determined to suppress all vestiges
of democratic freedom and civil liberties of the people in order to
uphold their own authoritarian regime.

SUBSERVIENCE TO ANGLO-AMERICA IN FOREIGN
POLICY

In foreign policy the national government has announced
its pious intention to follow an independent line and to keep neutral
of the antagonistic power-bloc systems in which post-war-world
is sharply dividing itself. Pandit Nehru has even announced his
contemplated plan of forming a third bloc with Asian and South-
East Asian countries independent of both Anglo-American and
Soviet Blocs. In actual fact, however, the national government
has been actively aligning itself with the Anglo-American world
powers. They have proved themselves utterly incapable of playing
the role of the vanguard and leader of the revolutionary peoples
and revolutionary mass forces struggling for their freedom
throughout the world and of arraying them on a determined
onslaught against world reaction. It is however futile to expect
that this government of capitalists and entrenched vested-interests
will ever be pursuing a revolutionary line in foreign policy or
aligning itself with the peoples revolutionary bloc. It can only
think in terms of entrenched power politics and shift its course
hesitatingly through the eddies created by cross-currents of Anglo-
American-Soviet relationship of forces. Its natural predilections
and the pull of economic dependence and collaboration with the
Anglo-American bloc however inevitably and imperceptibly draw
it closer to the Anglo-American side, however, much it may flaunt
its line of neutrality.

THE DEMOCRATIC PROGRAMME OF THE R.S.P.

The utter failure of this so-called national government,
whether in respect of home or foreign policy, from the democratic
and revolutionary view point of the toiling masses and common
people, hardly require any further elaboration. The supreme
historic need of the moment is that of rallying and organising
the masses of toilers in a determined struggle for securing
their inherent democratic rights and the freedom to which
they are entitled. The masses of people are no longer prepared to
submit to the conditions of slavery, exploitation and oppression,
against which the so-called independent and national government
of free India has failed to provide them any relief or to better their
lot in any manner. The disillusionment and frustration of the
democratic aspirations of the masses during the last one year have
already prepared the ground for the new phase of mass-struggle
to which the Muzaffarpur and Gopalgunje Resolutions have
directed the attention of the Party. The Party must now move
forward amongst the masses in different class-fronts and endeavour
by all means to rally them through independent class and mass
organisations for immediate realisation of the following minimum
democratic programme :

1. Complete democratisation of the state; immediate
severance of all connections with the British
Commonwealth and the British Empire; abolition and
liquidation of the Native States and the Princely order,
and integration of the States as parts of democratic
federation of India.

3. Immediate publication of the terms of all secret treaties
and annulment of anti-national treaties.

4. A fully democratic constitution based on universal
adult franchise to the exclusion of capitalists, landlords
and other vested interests; direct election, abolition
of second chambers of legislature in the Provinces;
right of recall and referendum; transfer of power to
the workers and peasants and to democratically elected
representatives of toilers in fields and factories (in the
true meaning of the slogan of Mazdoor-Kisan Raj).

5. Full guarantees for the right to freedom of person,
speech, association, conscience and press; equality and
special protection to the language and culture of the
minorities and their democratic rights; immediate
repeal of all repressive laws like the Public Safety and
Security Acts.

6. Full constitutional guarantee for the right to
employment and a decent minimum standard of living
and income for all citizens, irrespective of castes, creed
or religion; forty hour week; right to strike, trade union
recognition and social insurance at the cost of the state
and employers.

7. Immediate nationalisation of banks and large-scale
financial organisation; Nationalisation of all basic and
key industries and such important sectors of large-scale
industries vital for the welfare of the people—as
cotton, jute, coal, electricity, civil aviation, drugs and
chemical industries etc. without compensation.

8. Workers share in the control and management of
industrial and business establishments.

9. Abolition of the Zemindary System without
compensation; Confiscation of all lands belonging to
large land owners without any sort of compensation
and redistribution of land to the tillers of the soil.

10. Economic plan to develop the national economic
resources and removal of capitalist vested interests
from strategic economic points.

11. Radical purge of the administration and direct
association of popular mass organisations and their
representatives in the day-to-day work of
administration; Re-organisation of the army and navy
in the form of a peoples' militia.

12. Liquidation of the burden of rural indebtedness by the
immediate scrapping of all outstanding debts above a
minimum; establishment of state-banks for the
provision of cheap loans to the peasantry for
productive purposes; co-operative marketing and
minimum price for principal crops.

13. Establishment of compulsory free primary education,
free medical and public health services for all citizens
and especially for rural areas.

R.S.P. TO UTILISE ALL AVENUES FOR APPROACHING
THE MASSES INCLUDING COMING ELECTIONS TO
WORK OUT THE DEMOCRATIC PROGRAMME

In the struggle for the realisation of this democratic
programme the Party shall utilize all avenues for approaching
the masses including the coming local and general elections,
and shall try to mobilise maximum mass-sanction behind these
demands. It shall at the same time clearly keep before its view its
objective of complete Socialist transformation of the society or
maximum programme of a Socialist Revolution, and endeavour
at every stage to give a socialist orientation to the outlook and
organisation of the masses.

LEFT UNITY

The Revolutionary Socialists shall be prepared for the task
of organising the masses for the above mentioned democratic
programme, to co-operate with all genuinely democratic and
socialist parties in the country and to join their own forces with
the latter as necessity arises. But the various attempts at forging
left-unity in recent months have shown that these inevitably
degenerate into sectarian blocs serving the interests of one
particular group or party, or are broken up in mutual suspicion
and wrangling. In order to guard against such degeneration, the
task of forging socialist and left-unity should never be conceived
mechanically as a superficial alliance of parties and party leaders
over the heads of the masses, and must be based on common
acceptance, adherence and the joint endeavour to work out the
common minimum programme. The only unity that is worth
striving for is unity of action and struggle and the efforts of
the party shall be directed towards that end.

TASKS OF THE PARTY IN THE COMING REVOLUTION

The party stands today at the threshold of that historic
juncture when the struggle for democracy and the struggle for
socialism has become interwoven and the one inevitably passes
into the other. Our struggle for democracy can be successful only
to the extent that we are conscious of our revolutionary socialist
objectives and marshal our forces with that end in view. The
democratic programme is only the beginning. Its historic purpose
is to isolate and paralyse all vested-interests in order to smash the
entrenched power of the capitalist and land lords.

It is needless to emphasize that in order to successfully
accomplish this task the Party has to regroup and redeploy its
own forces for comprehending and leading of the broadest upswing of the new mass-movement, and to emerge as the mass-
party of workers, peasants and toiling people in general. The mass
struggle has already begun. The peasants of Bihar and Eastern
U.P., Tea-garden labourers in North Bengal, the workers of
Calcutta, Jamshedpur, Kanpur and Kerala, the state-peoples of
Cochin, Gwalior and Coochbehar have shown, under the
leadership of R.S.P. units of these places what they can achieve.
But it must be pointed out that unless the Party moves forward
determinedly and acquire the necessary organisational strength
for carrying out the tasks which face it in this new historic phase,
it will simply give the enemies of revolution a new lease of life
and a new tenure to exploit and oppress the masses. The entire
future of the people and the toiling millions are at stake. History
will be on our side only Lo the extent we are prepared to face the
tasks set by it. We have to march resolutely, to mould the future,
to make our own history. There are only two alternatives: either
we move the Revolutionary Socialist way or get stuck in the
morass that the Indian capitalist newly installed in power has
inevitably landed us in. The Party is confident that
Revolutionary Socialism is bound to win ultimately, but the
Party must prepare itself as the proper vehicle of the coming
revolution. That is the order of the day for the R.S.P.